A Search for Donald Cottee

by Philip Spires

  “My granddad says it’s all rubbish,” I shouted for the benefit of the other thirty or so in the class. “He says that there’s no such thing as miracles, so it’s no wonder fishes is wrong! He calls it the opium of the masses.”

  Now I’d no idea what opium might be, let alone masses, though not many years had elapsed since a child of my own age might have been asked to run an errand to the local shop for an ounce of laudanum to help a housewife through her day. But it was a phrase my granddad used quite often and, though he never said very much, these words were always said out loud and in full. They had a resonance, a rhythm that I now understand appealed to my latent and unexpressed musical talent, and that’s why I remembered them so precisely. I did the same with his other apparently conditioned response, and learned that one off pat as well. The one for religion was the one I have already raised and, those years ago, unfortunately spoken. The other was for politics and he practised it regularly. Whenever the rather avuncular, or perhaps grandfatherly face of Ramsay MacDonald appeared on the tele, my grandfather used to take a popping puff of his pipe, sit up, project a hissing gob across the hearthrug into the grate and mutter a single word. “Turncoat.” Like opium and masses, for me ‘turncoat’ was a word that meant about as much as ‘situation’, but it sounded good so I learned to say “Turncoat” whenever somebody called MacDonald appeared. I still do it with burgers. I even copied the crooked index finger that propped out alongside the stem of granddad’s pipe and always accompanied the word. People in fast food restaurants haven’t the faintest idea what I am up to when I do it nowadays. Unfortunately for me, Mrs Cartwheel knew exactly what I was referring to when I squealed out on the subject of opium and masses in her classroom.

  It was clear from the moment silence descended like a sodden blanket that I had committed the most cardinal of sins, except, ‘cardinal’ was a word we weren’t allowed to use because it was a Roman word and Mrs Cartwheel didn’t want it in a classroom of hers. I had tried to point out that, when we did the miracles, the centurion was also a Roman and he was in the classroom, but she said that didn’t matter. Apparently there were Romans and Romans, just like, I now realise, there are gods and gods.

  “Donald Cottee,” she said in measured tones, with ultimate authority but without the slightest anger, “you have just blasphemed.”

  It was a big word, and a word that I knew. It was something you learned quite early on, probably the first time you tried to copy your granddad in front of your mother. And I knew it indicated something serious. It was one of the few words that got my mother angry. She used to curl up her lip, shake her head and grimace at its sound. This usually accompanied any mention, in any shape or form, of the word ‘god’, but her reactions were not the products of the same reasoning as my granddad’s. I used to like taunting her. I’d get prepared with a word or two, make sure the back door out of the kitchen was open, and then, probably when she was otherwise preoccupied with a pan of potatoes that needed boiling water pouring off down the sink, I would spout forth and then scarper, thus avoiding the expected clip round the ear. For me it was play, a source of mischief and fun. And so, in Mrs Cartwheel’s classroom, as a result of miracles, fishes, masses and opium strangely, perhaps uniquely combined, I smiled. That was my real downfall.

  “Donald Cottee,” she said, knowing the power of a repeated name, “God doesn’t like those who blaspheme. It is the greatest sin imaginable. Donald Cottee,” she said, “follow me.” Strangely enough, that’s exactly what Jesus had said to his disciples in The Miracles Of Jesus.

  Now there were gradations of punishment in Kiddington School. Some, even most, were meted out by the class teacher. More serious misdemeanours were referred to the headmaster, who was a genial, even jovial giant, a perfectly reasonable man, no less, who took his role seriously and carried it out conscientiously. When referred, you knew you had it coming. It was one of those stereotypical moments when it was going to hurt him more than it hurt you, but it never worked that way. It firkin hurt.

  He wasn’t in any way a nasty man. Years later I used to share an occasional pint with him in the posh pub at the top of West Lane. He was a broken man by then, wrecked by the death of his wife, and a sufferer from severe arthritis that had just about crippled him. But in his prime, he was big and strong, and when you deserved to be punished he really gave it some wellie. And, when your class teacher addressed you by your full name a full three times in as many sentences just before marching you down the corridor, you knew what to expect.

  “... I am going to send you to the headmaster, Donald Cottee,” which made it a record four times for my name. “Blasphemy is a sin and you have blasphemed.”

  Six of the best they called it. As far as I was concerned, any value judgment depended on your point of view. From where I experienced it, the sensation fell considerably short of ‘best’. My mother came to school the next day because I had come home in floods of tears. She said she was going to complain. Mrs Cartwheel and the headmaster explained what had happened and what I’d said. My mother was so angry she marched me out of school, straight back home and beat the detritus out of me to teach me a lesson. She then walked off down the street to have it out with my granddad, who, by then, was off work permanently because the dust in his lungs meant that he could only breathe through about five percent of their capacity. He was fed up with being indoors, and had the patience of a hyperactive whirligig, but considerably less mobility. I could hear from the other end of the street my mother shouting at him, saying he shouldn’t be putting such ideas in my head, that I was just a child and couldn’t understand such things. I do remember my granddad raising his voice loud enough to be audible just once before his breath ran out. The words that registered were ‘traitor’ and ‘class’. He didn’t want me to become one, apparently. It blew over, as things always did, but to this day I remain wary of anything that gods don’t like.

  I am not alone, of course. In fact, what gods don’t like has also literally filled the lives of others over the years, as they racked their over-exercised brains to explain theologically why gods should have bothered to create things to which they later fundamentally objected. For me, this has always provided the most persuasive argument in favour of atheism. How can you claim perfection for your god if the idiot spent so much time labouring over things whose only apparent purpose is to be shunned? Why create something you intend to deny? There is the possibility, of course, that your gods are of the same vain variety as the ancient Greek specimens, who might just have done something like that as a bit of a wheeze. The cynical operators would have been rolling on their backs with their legs kicking the air in laughter. “Let’s create Oedipus,” they’d say, “predetermine his future and then giggle publicly as it inevitably unfolds!” What a hoot! What a crowd of stupid deuteropathies... But contemporary gods are not supposed to be such psychopaths. They claim love, distributed rather than experienced or received, but still they see themselves as infallible, omnipresent and omnipotent. Well, I suppose Zeus exhibited plenty of the last one, especially when he came to the party as a swan and the occasional wolf. And, despite their infallibility, they still create things they don’t like and thus have to shun for eternity. Is that cynical or merely incompetent? And if the latter, what price infallibility?

  Take knees, for example. What is so fundamentally wrong with knees? I admit that mine would be difficult to describe as pretty... but unacceptable? There’s a patella covering the joint, of course, and they are a bit creased at the back. But I have no bulging blue veins, no angry red inflammation. They are perfectly reasonable knees. And I still have two of them! And, if one is that way inclined, god made my knees.

  So why does god in his Cypriot, orthodox manifestation object so vehemently to knees entering his church? There you are, on holiday, eager to experience those little details of culture that might make the trip informative, worthwhile, even enjoyable, and there at the entrance to that q
uaint little church that you have just stumbled upon is the notice that says, “No shorts or garments that do not cover the knee.” Most people who visit Cyprus, it seems, have just the one leg. I suppose I could drop my shorts a bit, bare the bumicky and cover the knees. I doubt, however, that the practice would help, since almost everywhere gods don’t like bumickies, deapite the fact that they made them as well.

  There are gods around - quite a few, it seems - who don’t like shoes. Now I have some sympathy for this position. The average British tourist seems to fall into one of three categories when it comes to footwear. The main category is the newbie. It’s as if the decision to travel automatically triggers a shoe purchase. You can imagine the scene. Glossy brochures with blue pictures of blue sky, blue sea and blue swimming pools contrasting with ranks of white tower-block hotels are dutifully thumbed in that strange version of reality that occupies the defined but indefinable days between Christmas and New Year. A decision is made. That one! A large, multi-colour-printed table of dates and prices is argued over by every member of the family, each of whom comes up with a different total cost. A travel agent is visited some time in January when the arguments have subsided, and in any case you emerge from the shop having booked a completely different hotel in another country. A document has been signed, a crinkly pink or yellow copy is folded in the wife’s handbag. The words, “Now we need a shoe shop” automatically follow, as if driven by instinct.

  These Brits, feet agleam in self-consciously carried new footwear, then take their paseos in droves along the sea front. The trainers are clearly rubbing flesh from the bone and the stroll becomes a limp after approximately two hundred metres, a distance sufficient to ensure that the wearer’s Achilles tendons have become exposed. Then after limping back to the hotel and placing vast elastoplast squares over the red and inflamed skinless near-circles, the wearer stays shoeless by the pool the next day in preparation for repeating the process the next evening, except on this occasion the paseo lasts only fifty metres, or as far as the first pub.

  A second category, and a small one, is the party-type. Shoes here are a statement of intent or invitation, depending on gender. Ladies wear something strappy, concoctions that are more gaps and holes than substance, their cost apparently inversely proportional to the amount of material employed in their construction. Gentlemen, on the other hand, wear something big and hunky, or something absurdly long and pointed at the toe. There may be some subtlety about the points thus being made, but, chances are, it’s the same old motive. She has the gaps, he protrudes. They meet in a disco.

  A third category, again large, almost as large as the newbies, is the tried and trusted. There’s nothing new for these people, just the same old pair of grubby, sweaty trainers they always wear. And almost always with socks, even the women. The shorts are new, the cut-away t-shirts are pristine white, but the trainers have seen it all many times before.

  But I digress. The point is that gods hate shoes. I suppose people made shoes, so that might be the reason that gods don’t like them. Again, the interested, culturally-sensitive tourist wants to view an interior, genuinely desires to make contact with experience and then, at the door a notice blankly says “Remove shoes.” The party-type would be barred entry anyway and all categories seeking such culturally authentic experiences would probably be told to leave their women at the door as well. Funny god, isn’t it, that’s dissatisfied with a good half of his professedly perfect output! The tried and trusted Brits ought to leave their smelly trainers at the door. The newbies, however, should not expect to find their recent and still glistening purchases waiting for them when they return, despite the newly bloodstained heels.

  Gods in further-flung places, on the other hand, don’t like trousers, or shorts, or legs in any shape or form. They become acceptable, however, when rendered tube-like in a sarong. Now this garment is apparently only acceptable to the relevant god if rented from the heavies that run the ticket office. You can show up with your own brightly coloured cloth and dutifully wrap it around before approaching the booth, but the entrance price still includes the sarong rental fee. The god, however, does not seem to complain when the unfamiliar pattern that you introduced shuffles around the temple.

  In a few places, I’m told, gods don’t like shirts, except those worn by women. Perhaps that’s why they invented different words, such as blouse, top, et cetera, to refer to the covering on the upper half of a female. “Males, remove your shirt when entering the temple”, the notice says. You would have thought that a group claiming perfection would have got their collective acts together. Some say put things on, others take them off. Don this, doff that. They’re a confused lot, these gods.

  Of course, we have known for years that gods don’t like tops of heads. It’s strange, really, because you would have thought that them upstairs would have grown used to seeing that bit. Maybe their oversight is suspended for those who go to church so they have the privilege of covering up the bit that advertises their tutelage. This, to say the least, is strange behaviour since entering all houses - except god’s - demands the removal not addition of headgear. And then there are even some religions where the god demands you put a hat on to eat. Obviously this is to stop the mashed potato and gravy spoiling the ceiling when it immediately and spontaneously shoots out of the top of your skull.

  Now in later life I find myself more likely to blaspheme, even though gods still don’t like it. I might be expressing free will. It could be argued, therefore, that I should take full personal responsibility for my actions and deviant thoughts. But then free will is also something of a cop out for the gods. Again, if they created everything, they also created free will and are thus responsible for its consequences. And, at the moment, my own free will not only rejects anything even remotely connected with the idea of miracle, and thus further offends gods, but also distrusts what is claimed as gospel from sources much closer to home than any heaven, in fact no further away than Paradise.

  By chance I was passing the club again so I decided to call in. It was early doors and I had expected to find Olga at work alone in her office, in residence and engaged in administration, rather than administering services of the type I had witnessed on the last visit. I’ve had no further success, of course, in the pursuit of my goal, not since that single vision of heaven in the cave at Montesinos. Since then I have been shunned, pushed, cajoled, threatened, abused, used, misused and almost eaten alive by four of the fiercest cats imaginable. I have not only been rejected by my goal, I have suffered the ignominy of being ignored. A suspicion arises that the single success I achieved was pursued by she whom I pursued not out of election or preference, but merely as a come-on, to ensure I remained in a state of supplication, a position from where, in future, I could be controlled, predicted, manipulated. Sure enough I have remained both obsessed and subservient since then. I remain a glutton for punishment, though I will forego the electric prongs, thank you.

  And so, a couple of weeks ago, I once again chanced my arm and tried the door of Paradise. This time I found no blonde, either submissive or assertive. I found no beauty, and neither did I encounter the cutting, dismissive demon she has lately become. All I found was Mick Watson, slumped over the office desk, the rest of the place empty, as yet too early to have any paying customers.

  “Hey, Mick,” I said, applying the usual false joviality I reserved for him. “What’s up?”

  He raised his head from its resting place on his forearms. These had lain flat, folded across the blotter, the same object from which I had extracted the documents about his clandestine plans for The Castle. “Vertical,” he mumbled, though without the conviction that would have faithfully reproduced our boyhood wordplay.

  “You look like you’ve just come round from one of Mrs Cartwheel’s sleep sessions in Kiddington Junior.” This, perhaps, was the first time in over fifty years that I had spoken to him ‘personally’, without conveying or seeking inform
ation, without presenting or eliciting a position. It was just a memory we probably shared. I concluded we must both be getting old.

  For a moment he was confused. Then, in the next instant, years of tiredness fell from his face. There was a glint of nostalgia, a momentary warmth of recollection, but it soon dissolved, replaced by the blank empty despair that had greeted me.

  “Now that’s going back a bit,” he said.

  “Not far off sixty years for you, Mick, and a couple less for me.”

  I needed no further prompt. My assessment of the situation was both rapid and accurate. I quickly returned to the foyer and found a new bottle of brandy in the cupboard under the bar. Back in the office, I set the two water glasses on the blotter pad where Mick’s head had rested and poured two large knock-outs. “Get that inside you,” I said. He complied, and then screwed up his face in an anguish that knew no bounds.

  “I’m not supposed to drink any booze...”

  I laughed. “Mick, every time I’ve seen you since we came to live in Spain, I swear you have had at least a beer in your hand, or sometimes a glass of wine.”